No one knew how long this battle had lasted.
Perhaps ten years, perhaps a hundred.
When the aftershocks of their final clash slowly subsided, only two faint sounds of labored breathing remained, as though they might fade away at any moment.
"Cough... cough, cough..."
Jiang Taibai knelt on one knee, propped up by a longsword covered in cracks.
His robes were already soaked in blood. Even the left half of his body had been almost entirely eaten away by demonic energy, exposing stark white bone.
And on another fragment of meteorite not far from him-
Cang Xuan was in even worse shape.
Half his skull had been sheared away by Sword Qi, and a gaping hole pierced straight through his chest.
Separated by a hundred zhang of empty space, the two stared fixedly at each other.
Both had miscalculated one thing.
Jiang Taibai had assumed that a "scholar" like Cang Xuan, who spent his years studying corpses, could not possibly cultivate a path of slaughter. As the mighty Sword Emperor, he should have been all but certain to defeat him if he fought with his life on the line.
But he had never imagined that this madman's foundations, built in pursuit of truth, could be so terrifyingly deep.
Cang Xuan had miscalculated as well.
Though he acknowledged that Jiang Taibai was qualified to discuss the Dao with him, that was all.
He considered himself a transcendent existence, someone who ought to be invincible throughout the Three Realms.
Yet the outcome was a dead end that would claim them both.
"Jiang Taibai... you madman..."
Cang Xuan coughed up a great mouthful of purplish-black blood. "To kill me... you actually burned your own sword heart..."
"Aren't you afraid... that your Divine Soul will be utterly annihilated?!"
"We're both arrows at the end